


Constellation Dreams

by SumthinClever



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 19:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3499580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SumthinClever/pseuds/SumthinClever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it takes looking out to the stars to reaffirm what's important right here at home. (A.K.A., let's take my boys camping!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constellation Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GeekishChic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeekishChic/gifts).



> So, years ago, my lover asked me for this prompt. SURPRISE! It's taken me years to get 2,000 words. Sorry, but I hope you like it. xD! Prompt went something like: "John buys Sherlock a star for his birthday and they go camping to find it and smut session." I fulfilled at least most of that. xD! 
> 
> Also amusingly, I asked said lover what people do while camping about a month or so ago. Thanks for helping with your own fic. xD!

“A star?!” Sherlock asked, incredulously, looking up from the certificate.

John just beamed at him. For the first time, he had actually surprised Sherlock with his choice of birthday presents. Sherlock had been able to guess what John had gotten him the last several years and John was tired of being so predictable.

And if this gift was a bit of a joke on Sherlock’s continued ignorance of astronomy, well, John was entitled to his fun.

“But what in the world will I ever do with a _star_?” Sherlock queried, his tone morphing more toward confusion.

“Nothing really. Look at it?” John proposed. “It’s not an active gift, Sherlock. It’s just something that bears your name. It’s a little piece of you out in the cosmos.”

And if this piece of him wasn’t solely his, wasn’t even recognized nationally by the IAU, by any of the scientific community, Sherlock didn’t need to know all that.

“There is every piece of me down here on Earth. What purpose does a star bearing my name serve me?”

John rolled his eyes. Trust Sherlock not to appreciate the whimsical, despite his artistic soul.

“Think of it as your North Star,” John said to him.

Sherlock was quiet for a minute, as if searching for John’s meaning amongst his numerous mind palace entries. When he seemed to find it, he scoffed.

“John, my phone has a GPS.”

John just sighed at him.

“That’s it. We’re going to go find it.”

“Excuse me?!” Sherlock’s incredulous tone was back.

“Yes. Definitely,” John decided. “We’re going camping. This weekend. In the country. We’re going to go out and find your star. Too many lights in London to see it properly.”

“You want us to _leave London_? But what if a case comes up?”

“I think the Yard can survive without you for a weekend.”

There was that scoff again.

“It’ll be brilliant,” John said, ignoring him. “We’ll sleep in sleeping bags, eat by campfire. I’ll even let you experiment on wild plants,” John offered graciously.

“John, you cannot possibly expect me to go on a _camping trip_ to find a _star_.”

“It’s settled then! I’ll just text Lestrade and let him know we’ll be indisposed for the weekend so he won’t bother us.”

“Don’t you dare!” Sherlock demanded.

John smiled to himself that Sherlock was acknowledging they were going camping.

“Fine. You can assist vicariously.”

Sherlock smiled triumphantly, as if the victory was entirely his own.

“Should we rent a car?” John mused.

“We’ll have Mycroft send one. He could stand to be a bit more inconvenienced.”

“Excellent. I’ll get the maps and telescope. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

Xxx

Sherlock seemed to realise he had been talked around and reciprocated by complaining—loudly—the entire trip. John ignored him and studied their maps. They would be in a prime position to see the star coordinates soon. Far enough in the country that the city’s light pollution would be lessened. High enough in the hemisphere and almost at the optimal season to hopefully see the star without too much aid of the telescope he’d brought along.

John wouldn’t let Sherlock bring his laptop. What kind of camping trip would it be if he let Sherlock keep all of his technology? He intended to hide Sherlock’s phone if it ever detached from the man’s hand. But Sherlock was expecting a text from Lestrade any second now, or so he’d been saying since they left London. It seemed London’s seedy underbelly did not see fit to bend to Sherlock’s whim and commit any murders today.

“Boring,” Sherlock said as he watched John set up the tent on their hillside.

Of course he wasn’t helping. John hadn’t really expected him to. Especially since John had finally stolen his phone.

“If you’d like something to do, go and gather some water from the creek,” John told him while trying to force the pole deeper into the ground.

Sherlock was looking as if this was the last thing he wanted to do, but then a flicker came into his eye.

“Yes, you can experiment on it, but NOT if it involves trying to poison our food supply,” John told him, cottoning on. He knew his partner well.

The gleam left Sherlock’s eye and he pouted but went off to gather the water anyway. John would have to check the food before they ate it.

When Sherlock returned with the water, John was setting up what would be their fire for later. For now, he thought a nice hike around the area would do them both some good.

Sherlock was not amused at the suggestion, but given John’s lack of reaction to his stubbornness, he just took his complaining on the road as they hiked. It died down after awhile, though. John suspected even Sherlock couldn’t deny that the area was beautiful. And given that he had intentionally brought them to an area known for a particularly rare breed of flower, Sherlock was quite delighted enough to study it.

Hikers weren’t usually allowed to travel through this area due to the rarity of the flowers and the fear of their extinction, but Mycroft had more uses than his car services.

Though John wouldn’t allow Sherlock to rip up one of the flowers to take home with them, he did agree to come back to this area with a few of Sherlock’s less harmful pieces of science equipment to study the flowers more in depth.

When John judged it was late enough to start heading back, they reversed their course and found their campsite again.

John began making the fire while Sherlock constructed the telescope for later. He demanded he be in charge of all things technological on this excursion, even if he wasn’t interested in what the device was used for.

When the fire was up and roaring, John gathered the necessities for making tea. Camping or no, they were British, after all. He gave Sherlock his cup and sipped at his own while he prepared the food they would eat that night. He had originally suggested the classic hotdogs and s’mores, but Sherlock had outright refused. He settled for campfire chili, cornbread, and baked potatoes. It reminded John of his army days, this basic cooking.

When the daylight faded enough, John thought he’d give telling ghost stories a go. He should have known better. Sherlock nitpicked at all of them. He pointed out the historical inaccuracies of some of them and the scientific implausibility of the rest. “None of them were _logical,_ John,” he complained.

So John told some stories of his war days. He didn’t like to dwell on these days, but he had gone through a lot worse than PTSD with Sherlock, and Sherlock had helped him overcome that once before. Besides, anything that brought that kind of light into Sherlock’s eyes, John couldn’t help but be inclined to encourage. Usually.

And that’s not to mention the fact that talk of John during the war never failed to arouse Sherlock. The man had a bit of a fetish. He went mad the first time he saw John’s uniform and demanded John put it on (a bit of a tighter fit, but he managed). He wore John’s dog tags around his own neck often. John admitted that that sight turned even him on. Whatever it was about seeing one’s partner dressed in one’s own attire, John was not immune.

When John described some of the more gruesome of the wounds he’d treated, or at least attempted to, Sherlock went off on a tangent of how he would try to replicate the trauma on some of the corpses he secured from Molly and how he’d see if he could find a way to treat the injuries better. John tuned him out some way between inflicting the wounds himself and the successful recovery of the patients. Those were experiments that he would _not_ be participating in. Seeing such things once was more than enough, thanks.

When Sherlock’s phone rang, John cursed himself for forgetting to put it on silent. Sherlock lit up like never before and demanded the phone back and John acquiesced because he _had_ said that Sherlock could assist vicariously, though he hadn’t intended for the need to come up.

While Sherlock ranted and raved at the inadequacies of New Scotland Yard, John heated their dinner. He could get used to this.

After half an hour of insults occasionally interspersed with helpful deductions, John took Sherlock’s phone and bid their farewell to Lestrade. Sherlock squawked his protest and was overruled.

“We’re supposed to be camping, remember?” John asked him.

“Yes, but Lestrade-”

“He has enough to be going on with. Eat,” John demanded and forced Sherlock’s dinner upon him.

Sherlock ate with a petulant frown marring his face, but didn’t degrade the quality of the fare, lucky for him.

With dinner complete, John consulted their star maps and set about directing Sherlock to adjust the telescope to the correct start system, right ascension and declination. Sherlock’s star was in NGC 5866, a lenticular galaxy in the Draco constellation. They had a bit of trouble and John had to use the Big and Little Dippers as reference points to put them on the right track, but they found it eventually.

Sherlock, having located his star, took a quick look at it and stepped back from the telescope.

“Yes. It’s a big burning ball of gas just like all the other burning balls of gas surrounding it. Thank you for such a unique gift, John.”

John ignored his sarcasm and had a look for himself. Yes, he supposed that Sherlock’s fireball was very much like all the other fireballs he could see through their lens, but somehow, knowing that it was _Sherlock’s_ fireball made it that little bit more special. He wished Sherlock could see that, too.

“It is just a star, yes, but it’s your star, Sherlock.”

“But I don’t _need_ a star-.”

“But you have one anyway. And years from now, when someone stumbles across it, they will be able to look it up and know it’s yours. And I think that’s amazing, just another way to be remembered. And whether you realise it or not, Mister I Solve Crimes For A Living, you, too, want to be remembered. Besides, ‘we’re all star stuff,’ Sherlock. We were made from everything being formed in those stars right now. It is already a part of you and a part of me.”

Sherlock held his tongue and just looked at John for a moment. Then, out of nowhere as far as John was concerned, Sherlock kissed him. Unexpected but far from unwelcome, John kissed him back. Greedy, eager tongues danced in each other’s mouths as John fought to understand what he had said that drove Sherlock to this reaction. He wasn’t sure but questioning it seemed like a bad idea, especially as it might mean breaking his mouth from Sherlock’s and that was _definitely_ a bad idea just at the moment.

Sherlock broke the kiss to whisper against John’s lips, “I will always care about something that is a part of you, John,” before diving back in. John felt his heart skip a beat from the sentiment of it all, the fact that Sherlock had uttered it.

John let himself be led back to their tent by the lips. He consented to Sherlock lowering him to their joint sleeping bag because Sherlock refused to have separate ones. He permitted Sherlock to undress him and assented to his lover’s hands and mouth roving over his body. And he allowed himself to be loved, deeply, thoroughly, and with all the care the accession to give his body demanded.

“I love you, John,” John heard whispered above him as Sherlock drove into him again and again. “I love you.”

John captured Sherlock’s mouth again, tried to pour everything he felt for this insane man into the kiss he delivered. Let oceans worth of emotion pass through lips.

“I love you, too.” To your star and back.

**Author's Note:**

> "We're all star stuff" is a Carl Sagan quote.


End file.
